Sam Adams and a pound of Hops

Okay, so Sam Adams claims to use a pound of hops per barrel, and claims other brewries use about 2 to 3 ounces...

But how big is a barrel to them? Because I use a 2 - 3 ounces of hops in a 5 gallon home brew, and more than that in an IPA... Assuming a barrel is 55 gallons--is that reasonable to assume--then Sam Adams would be using about an ounce and a half of hops per 5 gallons... Is that all they use? They seem to have a beer a lot of people really like.

A barrel is 31 gallons.

And also, Boston lager is about an amber lager, something that only calls for 20 or so IBUs.

Either way, they use more than the BMC boys.

Okay, so that's about 2.5 oz per 5 gallons, which is a little closer to a lot of the recipes I'm seeing. That makes more sense. That also gives me a clue how little the mega brews are getting away with using...no wonder it's so easy to make better beer.

Mega brews typically use hop extract, so it's kind of comparing apples to oranges. That said, their IBUs are much lower than SA.

My idea for that commercial is this... The 2 hops they use have an alpha acidity of like 5.5 or 7 max... They need that much just to bring up the bitterness, the "other" guys who are using less are probably using stuff like nugget... Just and example... My 2 cents. Could be wrong.

Keep in mind that utilization is increased in larger batches. So, it's more like if you used 4-5 ounces per 5 gallons.

sittingturbo said:

My idea for that commercial is this... The 2 hops they use have an alpha acidity of like 5.5 or 7 max... They need that much just to bring up the bitterness, the "other" guys who are using less are probably using stuff like nugget... Just and example... My 2 cents. Could be wrong.

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I'm pretty sure all big brewers, SA included, use noble hops.

Ok...I'm doing research on Sam Adams for an article I'm doing and guess what? They have farmers from one strain of noble hops, Tettnang Tettnanger, 4.6% and UK East Kent Goldings, 5.96% on contract. I'm guessing that they use more than those two styles of hops in all of their beers. What we see on the market is a small percentage of beer that SA makes.

Aclay said:

Ok...I'm doing research on Sam Adams for an article I'm doing and guess what? They have farmers from one strain of noble hops, Tettnang Tettnanger, 4.6% and UK East Kent Goldings, 5.96% on contract. I'm guessing that they use more than those two styles of hops in all of their beers. What we see on the market is a small percentage of beer that SA makes.

Click to expand...

Boston Beer Company produces or has produced a total of 70 beers (some of which are retired).

http://ratebeer.com/brewers/boston-beer-company/32/